10 best project management tools with pros, cons & features

Today, project management is a need for many operational departments of companies, from daily business follow-up operations to long-term project planning. Project management includes much more than just task management. From managing a company to managing a department, all business operations consist of project management processes. So, project management tools have now become necessary for all of us. Luckily, when it comes to project management tools Excel or traditional agendas are no longer necessary. There are many project management tools for businesses today.  

The project management tool needs of each business unit and company can be various. Before deciding to pay for the best project management tool for your company and operational units, you should determine your project management needs and analyze what the best project management tool means for you.

Especially, project management tools that can provide you with a customizable workspace and user interface allow you to design your project management processes according to your needs, no matter which department you are in. Thus, you can design the best project management processes you need for many of your business departments in a single and all-in-one project management tool.

What are project management tools?

We mentioned that project management tools can be quite diverse according to the needs of your business. Today, it is now possible to easily access hundreds of online project management tools. So, what is a project management tool briefly and what should you consider before deciding on the best collaborative project management tool for your business? Let's take a look together.

Our first expectation from project management tools is that they allow us to collaborate. Collaborative project management tools allow you to manage a project management process in collaboration with your teammates. Thus, your team can easily see the tasks you have assigned to them, update the status of the tasks, or make changes within the authorizations you gave them. Therefore, it becomes important to be able to manage roles and authorizations in online project management tools. When choosing the best collaborative project management tool, collaboration and task management features alone will not be enough. Because project management is not just about task management. You also need to be able to track what and when your entire team is doing.

In addition, assigning deadlines to your team will ensure that your project management process continues without any delay. It is important that your project management tool supports in-app comments and chat to be able to manage all project management operations from a single platform and to enable your teammates who joined the team to see past developments. Thus, you can follow what is being discussed about a project and the development process of the project through a single online project management tool. Also, the ability to view the detailed history of each project detail provides a very efficient archive to you.

The most important thing that online project management tools provide is that they can make your company, departments, and teams more efficient. Therefore, you should stay away from complex interfaces and software limitations. Having a flexible project management tool will increase the productivity and creativity of your teams.

Before deciding on the best project management tool for your company, you should try the free plans of project management tools between your options. Thus, you will have the chance to try before paying for a project management tool. You can easily access free project management tools from the list of 10 best project management tools we have listed for you.

Let's take a look at the list of the 10 best project management tools so that you can choose the best project management tools and techniques for your team!

10 best project management tools

After finalizing your business needs and budget, use the following list of 10 best project management tools to see which suits you best!

1. Retable

2. Asana

3. Trello

4. ProofHub

5. Click Up

6. Monday

7. TeamGantt

8. Wrike

9. Teamwork

10. Podio
    

1) Retable

If you are looking for a complete and collaborative project management tool with all features under one roof, Retable is the best option for your project management needs! Retable offers customizable and ready-to-use project management templates. Eventually, you can import your data from other channels and share it with your teammates just within a few clicks.  

What is more, Retable allows you to design, organize, track, and coordinate your projects without any technical background. You can track the progress and even share data only with relevant teammates and manage their roles!

Finally, the all-in-one online project management tool allows you to manage and track all your project management process from a single platform. You will also get real-time reports with chart views for quick and easy analysis!  

Now, let's look at some of the use cases and features of Retable that can help you to run an effective project management process.

Features:

• Kanban View
• Calendar View
• Grid View
• Chart View
• Organization Plans
• Real-Time Collaboration
• Comments & Chat
• Project & Row History
• Project Snapshot
• Automation
• Advanced Sharing Options
• Role & Access Management
• Online Form Generator
• HTML Code Embedding Support
• API Integrations
• Ready to Use Templates
• Reporting
• Task Assignment
• Task Grouping
• Start Dates
• Due Dates
• Custom Fields
• Attachments
• Project Brief
• Automatically Provided Created Time and Creator Information
• File Sharing
• Filtered and Hided Data Sharing
• Public Views

Pros:

• Simple & Customizable Interface: Retable has a fully customizable and simple interface, so you can design your online project management tool without any confusion. Also, your teammates do not need any training or technical knowledge to use Retable.
• Detailed Project History and Backup: Even the minor change you make in your Retable project is recorded in the history tab in real-time. So, you can easily see which change was made when and by whom. If you accidentally delete your data, it is so easy to get it back. In addition, you can take a snapshot of the entire project with a single click and return it whenever you want.
• Advanced Role & Team Management: Thanks to the advanced role and access management, you can easily manage the authorizations of your teammates. Thus, your project data cannot be changed without your permission, and anyone can participate in your project within their authority.
• ‍Real-Time Automations: Thanks to real-time automation, you can receive instant e-mail notifications about significant changes to your project. Thus, even if you are not at the computer, you can follow the significant changes from anywhere and you do not need to check all the project tables one by one. ‍
• Synchronized Calendar & Kanban Views: You can convert your project tables to Kanban and Calendar views with a single click. Thus, you can create the most efficient workspace for yourself. You can easily switch between views, and any data you add is reflected in real-time in Kanban and calendar views. So, you do not have to update each view separately and you save time. ‍
• Easy & Quick Access: Retable does not require any additional setup or installation. You can sign up directly and start using it for free and it is accessible from all your devices. ‍
• Product Documentation Support: Retable has detailed documentation and video tutorials on how to use the product. Thus, you can easily learn everything about the project management tool without having to contact any customer representative. ‍
• One-Month Free Trial for PRO Plans: Retable offers you a one-month free trial for Business PRO and Personal PRO plans, along with its comprehensive free plan. Thus, you will have the chance to try all the PRO features with your team before deciding to purchase.

Cons:

• No Time Tracking: Retable does not offer a time-tracking feature. Instead, you can set start and end dates for your tasks. With the development to be made next month, you can receive notifications as the end date of your task approaches at the time you set for your deadlines.
• No Mobile Application: Retable's interface is suitable for mobile use. But it does not offer an additional mobile application. You can use it easily from your phone's browser.

2) Asana

Asana is project management software designed to help project collaboration. It allows users to manage tasks or projects online. With Asana, you can create custom workspaces for each team.

Let's take a look at Asana's features, pros, and cons together.

Features:  

• Automation
• Reporting
• Gantt Charts
• Kanban Boards
• Calendar View
• Forms
• Desktop and Mobile App
• List View
• Timeline View
• Task Assignment
• Task Grouping
• Start Dates
• Due Dates
• Custom Fields
• Attachments
• Project Brief
• Copy Projects
• Templates

Pros:  

• Integrations: Asana has lots of integration options which make your project management process better. ‍
• Calendar synchronization: Asana provides an easy calendar synchronized with all your project tasks.

Cons:

• No multi-person task assignment: Asana cannot allow you to assign the same tasks to more than one person.
• No time tracking: Asana is an online project management tool that unfortunately does not offer you time tracking feature.

3) Trello

‍Trello is one of the significant project management tools especially for creating a simple to-do list and Kanban boards to manage your tasks. It is a web-based collaboration and project management tool that has lots of benefits to make the project management process simpler.

Let's check out the features, pros, and cons of Trello together.

Features:

• Automation
• Kanban View
• Due Date
• Task Assignment
• Attachments
• To-Do Lists
• Calendar View
• Templates
• Integrations

Pros:

• Easy & Quick Access: Trello does not require any installation; you can directly sign up and start using the free plan. If you just want more features, you need to upgrade your plan and enter your card information to take full advantage of the app's capabilities.
• Visual Boards: Trello provides you with easy-to-navigate and drag-and-drop-based visual dashboards. If you do not have many tasks in your project, this may be comfortable for you. But if you need a comprehensive project management tool, visual dashboards alone can be hard to track. It can be ideal for tracking small projects.
• Task Calendar: You can set a due date for all your project tasks and sync them with your calendar.

Cons:

• Messy and Difficult to Track: If you have a long and detailed project management process, Trello's card-based view can make it difficult to keep track of your tasks. Cards that can be managed with drag and drop are ideal for keeping track of your simple daily tasks, but it is really difficult for a department to keep track of all their work or a company's projects and is a waste of time for you. Tasks shown with cards easily cause a messy dashboard.
• No time tracking: Trello is an online project management tool that unfortunately does not offer you time tracking feature.

4) ProofHub

ProofHub is a good project management software for teams that need to use visual materials for projects. Like other project management tools, ProofHub helps teams keep track of projects. But if your projects include design works or other visual materials, ProofHub may be a good option for you.

Let's take a look at ProofHub's features, pros, and cons together.

Features:

• Gantt Charts
• Kanban Boards
• File Sharing
• Chat
• Time-Tracking
• Templates
• Reports
• Notes
• In app notifications
• Comments
• Integrations

Pros:

• Quick & Easy Setup: ProofHub does not require any installation; you can directly sign up and start using the free plan. If you just want more features, you need to upgrade your plan and enter your card information to take full advantage of the app's capabilities.
• Simple & Easy to Adapt: ProofHub provides a simple and easy-to-adapt interface. So, you can quickly start to use this project management tool without any confusion.
• Mobile Application: ProofHub has a mobile application. So, you can access the project management application from anywhere with internet access.

Cons:

• Limited Features for Mobile App: ProofHub’s mobile application does not support table view.
• Request Forms are Only Editable with HTML: ProofHub does not allow you to edit the request form easily. You need to know HTML to edit the request forms.

5) ClickUp

ClickUp allows your teams to manage projects, tasks, chat, documents, and goals in one platform. ClickUp is a highly customizable project management tool. ClickUp has too many features.

Let's check it out together and decide whether it is the fit solution for you or not.

Features:

• Chat & Comments
• In-App Notifications
• Reporting
• Assignments
• Time-Tracking
• File Sharing
• Whiteboard
• Templates
• Integrations
• Mobile App
• Gantt Charts
• Calendar View
• Table View
• Activity View
• Form View

Pros:

• Visual Dashboards: ClickUp provides a wide variety of visual dashboards. Switching between views is easy. Thus, you can view your project management process on different visual boards.
• Sharing Options: ClickUp gives you full control over user permissions. So, you can manage your team's permissions on the project
• Real-Time Reporting: You can generate real-time reports with ClickUp. So, you can get an overview of your project and monitor the progress. Only paid customers can get reporting, cloud storage, and Gantt Charts.

Cons:

• Complexity: ClickUp offers so many features. It takes time to get full efficiency from the project management tool. If you manage a startup or small business, ClickUp can be complicated. Performing simple operations among so many features can be challenging for your team. If you are not familiar with professional project management tools, ClickUp is not for you.
• Low Mobile Performance: Unfortunately, the performance of ClickUp's android mobile application is low. So, you cannot just handle your project management needs from your mobile device.
• Long Learning Process: ClickUp requires a long and complex training process for your team due to its various features that may be complex. You may experience difficulties with the user interface because the text size is too small, and the color palette is too pale to provide contrast. Users need to plan systematically to take advantage of the great flexibility that project management software offers. This is also quite time-consuming.

6) Monday

Monday is a project management tool that provides collaboration, timeline views, calendar, time tracking and integrations. It is a simple task management tool that organizes your project tasks. Monday is a highly visual project management application where users can add collaborators, assign tasks, create project workflows, and track the project's progress.

Let's check out the features, pros, and cons of Monday.

Features:  

• Project Scheduling
• Chat & Notifications
• Time Tracking
• Mobile App
• Assignments
• Gantt Charts
• Calendar View
• Kanban View
• Integrations
• Automation
• Role Management
• Templates

Pros:

• Flexible User Interface: Monday.com has a good user interface. It gives you the flexibility to expand the data you want to display in your project table as columns. At the same time, this flexibility comes at a high cost. If you have large projects and lots of team members, the dashboard becomes challenging to follow. Also, the tables take a long time to load.
• Notifications: The Monday.com project management tool can send you email notifications. Thus, you can be informed when a project is assigned to you.
• Powerful Communication Features: You can easily invite guests to your views and timelines, whether they are part of your team or an external user. This feature helps to centralize communication and keeps all project information in one place.

Cons:

• Long Learning Process: Monday's user interface and functionality can be quite difficult to get used to. As your projects grow and require more task tracking, it becomes increasingly difficult to find what you are looking for.
• Limited Customization: Monday has extremely limited options for customizing your project management software. You must take advantage of the views prepared by Monday, and your options for changing that are limited. When it comes to large teams and complex project management processes, Monday’s UI and UX functionality is a failure.
• Lack of Must-Have Features for Project Management: Monday has so many powerful features, but most of these essential features for project management are only available on higher plans. For example, Gantt charts and calendar views are not available on the entry-level plan, even if you pay $24 for a month. Also, time tracking, custom dashboards, automation, dependencies, formulas, and even integrations are not included in this plan. Feature limitations are a big downside to Monday's entry-level plan. Because these features are essential for project management, and even if you want to use the starter plan with a small team, you will have to pay more.

7) TeamGantt

If you like to work with Gantt charts and use them as your main project management tool, TeamGantt may be the fit project management software for you.

Let's check out this service's pros, cons and features together.

Features:

• Sharing Options
• Calendar View
• List View
• Timeline
• Templates
• Time Tracking
• File Sharing
• Project History
• PDF Export for Timelines
• Kanban Board
• Reporting
• Integrations

Pros:

• Quick & Easy Setup: TeamGantt does not require any installation; you can directly sign up and start using the free plan. If you just want more features, you need to upgrade your plan and enter your card information to take full advantage of the app's capabilities.
• Easy to Learn: TeamGantt is a simple and easy-to-learn project management tool, especially for beginners who have never used project management software before. It does not have complex features.
• Related Tasks: TeamGantt allows you to create linked tasks. So, you know which tasks you need to complete before starting the next task

Cons:

• No In-App Notification Feature: TeamGantt unfortunately does not provide you with in-app notifications. For example, if you have an upcoming deadline or if a task has been assigned to you, you cannot view it on the application. You need to connect it from your desktop device.
• Limited Project Management Features: Unfortunately, TeamGantt has far fewer features than many of its competitors when it comes to project management features. TeamGantt specifically focuses on providing Gantt views. It has also recently added new views such as Kanban. We like that it is remarkably successful with Gantt charts. However, if you need a more comprehensive project management operation, TeamGantt may not be the right choice for you.

8) Wrike

Wrike is a project management tool that helps you organize your project management process, collaborate with your team, and track your tasks. Wrike's packages are designed to manage the entire project lifecycle from a single collaborative workspace.  

Here we listed the features, pros, and cons of Wrike.

Features:  

• Customizable Dashboard
• File Sharing
• Automation
• Gantt Charts
• Templates
• Forms
• Calendar
• Time-Tracking
• Visual Timeliness
• Two-Factor Authentication

Pros:

• Easy Team Collaboration: Wrike is an online project management tool that can provide you with easy collaboration by keeping all your teammates notified about the project details.
• Creating Related Tasks & Projects: It is possible to associate a task with multiple projects or tasks. So, you can link related tasks with each other without any duplication.
• Simple Gantt Charts: Wrike provides you with simple Gantt charts without the need for any other integration.

Cons:

• Complex features: Wrike is a detailed project management tool and unfortunately includes many features that you will not need in your project management process. This makes things harder for you and your team if you are not familiar with complex project management tools. It can complicate the project management process as it does not provide easy navigation.
• Mobile App has Limited Functionality: Wrike’s mobile app has limited functionality, you do not manage all your project management operations via the mobile app. You should use the web app to benefit from Wrike.
• Difficult Adaption Process: Wrike required a long and hard adaptation and training process. It may take time for your teammates to adapt to the software. Before you can fully manage your projects with Wrike, you need to learn exactly how to use this project management software.

9) Teamwork

Teamwork is a project management tool with an easy-to-use user interface. Teamwork also offers you a project management process that you can integrate with your e-mails.

We have listed the key features, pros, and cons of Teamwork for you.

Features:

• Chat
• Data Import from other project management tools
• Integrations
• Templates
• Calendar View
• Table View
• Time-Tracking
• History
• Gantt Chart
• Mobile application

Pros:

• Integrations: Teamwork can integrate with Microsoft Outlook, Google Calendar, and iCal.
• Mobile application: It provides a mobile application and gives users access from anywhere with internet connection.
• Time-tracking: Teamwork provides you with a time-tracking feature.

Cons:

• Complex Features: Teamwork has lots of features and it could be a disadvantage for your team, which is not familiar with professional project management software. Even simple operations can take time.
• Long Adaptation Process: To use Teamwork efficiently, an adaptation and training process is required. It may take time for your new teammates to adapt to the software. Before you can fully manage your projects with Teamwork, you need to learn exactly how to use this project management software.

10) Podio

Podio is a web-based project management application with customizable interfaces. With Podio, you can create separate workspaces for your different departments. Podio is designed to create custom business applications. You can create your project management app or task tracking app with Podio. It depends on your needs.

Let's check out Podio's features, pros, and cons.

Features:

• File Sharing
• Task Management
• Mobile App
• API Support
• Webforms
• Sharing Options
• Comments & Chat
• Video & Audio Chat
• Calendar
• Integrations

Pros:

• Mobile Application: Podio has a mobile application for Android, iPhone, and iPad, so you can access the project management application from anywhere with internet access.
• Communication Possibilities: Podio has additional features that allow you instant messaging and video chat. Thus, you can have instant video meetings about your projects with your teammates.

Cons:

• Complex Features: Podio can be very robust because of the increased functions. It can be a little hard to learn and use effectively. ‍
• No Time-Tracking: Podio is an online project management tool that unfortunately does not offer you a time tracking feature.

Final Thoughts

With many available options, it's not easy to choose the best project management tool! As you can see, each tool offers different features. So, you should select the right online project management tool by checking whether the features match your business requirements!

So how can you overcome this dilemma?

Well, while selecting the right online project management tool you can intrinsically look for the features that match your business requirements and also suit your budget!

Retable is one such online project management tool which offers a wide range of features at an affordable price! Since all the necessary solutions are available in this easy-to-use platform, you don't have to think twice before choosing it!